The Kenyan school curriculum is changing next year so we will need new textbooks for most of our classes. Ideally we need ten copies of each of the new student textbooks and one copy of each of the new teacher books.

Some of the younger children in class

We have obtained a quote (see the photos below) and the books will cost us a total of 264954 Kenyan Shillings, which is roughly US$2650. We would like to buy as many as possible before the new school year starts at the beginning of January.

If you are able, please make a donation through our fundraising page on M-Changa where international donors can use PayPal or credit/debit cards, and Kenyans can find details of how to donate using mobile money services.

Our Class 8 students are sitting their KCPE exams this week. These are taken by all Kenyan children before they leave primary school. We wish them all good luck with their results and with their future education when they start secondary school in January.

On Saturday we held a graduation ceremony for the students in our Pre-Unit class. This is the final class of the nursery section so in January they will join Class 1, the first class of primary school 🙂

Today is the International Day of the Girl, a day to highlight the challenges faced by girls around the world, and the ways these can be solved so that girls can have the same opportunities in life as boys.

CVC girls with pads donated by Fountain Youth Initiative

In Kenya lack of access to sanitary pads is an issue for many girls. If their family is struggling to put food on the table or a roof over their heads, buying pads may not be seen as a priority. This leads to girls missing school during their periods or even having sex in order to get money for pads (see this video for more information).

Thanks to a local NGO called Fountain Youth Initiative, the girls at CVC who need them receive free sanitary pads. This means that they are able to attend school all month without having to worry about the cost of buying them. We are very grateful to Fountain Youth for this assistance 🙂

Thanks to fundraising by a Brazilian friend of CVC and a grant from the Pollination Project, we have purchased a greenhouse, water tank and irrigation system, and planted vegetables in the greenhouse and in our vegetable garden.

Vegetables growing in the greenhouse

The project is run by women from the CVC savings and loan group, who will grow and sell the vegetables and share the profits with the school. Their part of the profit will be used to give more loans to group members so that they can start and expand small businesses.

The vegetable garden

If you would like to hold a fundraising event for us, please get in contact.

Over the last few months we have been taking part in the Peace First Challenge. The challenge encourages groups of children and young people to become peacemakers by identifying injustices in their local community and finding solutions to them.

The CVC Peace First Challenge team

Our group decided to focus on health and hygiene as this is a big issue for many of them and their families due to limited access to clean water, lack of money to buy soap and other cleaning products, and people not understanding the importance of keeping clean and the links between poor hygiene and sickness.

Discussing the issues

They talked to other children at school and visited several families in the area to get a better understanding of the situation and come up with possible solutions. They organised a fun day to teach other students, parents/guardians and the wider community about the importance of good hygiene and also learned how to make liquid soap, a skill they can share with their families.

The girls football team at the fun day

This was a successful project which encouraged the children to better understand local issues and helped them to understand that, although conditions in the area can be challenging, they are able to take an active part in improving the lives of themselves and their families.